Wednesday, April 29, 2015

(Criterion is releasing “The Friends
of Eddie Coyle” on Blu-ray this week. I am re-posting my review of
the 2009 DVD release of the same title; the Blu-ray does not include any new extras. You might want to look elsewhere if you want to
read about, like, the plot. Or other stuff.)

Consider this a tribute to George V.
Higgins (1939-1999), author of the 1970 novel “The Friends of Eddie
Coyle” on which the 1973 Peter Yates film is based:

The director sat down next to the
producer and smiled.

“Robert Mitchum,” the director
said.

“Robert Mitchum?” the producer
said.

“Robert Mitchum,” the director
said. “He’s the only guy who can play Eddie Coyle.”

“I see your point,” the producer
said. “By the way, I understand the ironic thing already. You
think you’re a clever prick, don’t you? But I still don’t like
the title. It doesn’t look good on a poster. It’s not sexy.”

“There’s no sex in this movie. Not
even a romantic interest,” the director said.

“Yeah, but we don't want the audience
to think that,” the producer said.

“Nobody’s going to see this movie
anyway, Paul,” the director said.

“That’s not funny, Peter,” the
producer said. He wiped the beer suds from his chin. “Fine, the
title stays. But this thing’s a bitch to adapt. The book’s almost
all dialogue.”

“And movies are all pictures,” the
director said, “no matter how bad they are. That’s the beauty of
it. There’s stuff that happens in between the words – you just
gotta read carefully. And all of that will be in the movie. It has to
be because it’s all pictures. Even when it’s dialogue, it’s
still pictures. Which is why we need Robert Mitchum because nobody
holds a camera like Bob Mitchum.”

“Bob?” the producer said.

“We used to play bridge together,”
the director said.

“Then why are you asking me to get
him?” the producer said.

“Fine, we never played bridge
together,” the director said. “Can you get him?

“Yeah, yeah. I think,” the producer
said.

“It really is a great book,” the
director said, “You have read it, haven’t you?”

“I’m writing the damn script,”
the producer said.

“That doesn’t answer the question,”
the director said.

“Stop busting my balls,” the
producer said.

“But I like busting your balls,”
the director said.

“I bet you do,” the producer said.

The director slammed back his beer in
one swift motion. He leaned forward.

“It's a great movie,” the critic
said. “A really great movie. And Robert Mitchum is the only one who
could do it. He really holds the camera.”

Video:
The film is presented in a 1.85:1
aspect ratio. The anamorphic, progressive transfer is crisp with
only minimal signs of damage. The film’s color palette is muted
and the director approved transfer doesn’t tart it up, giving it
just the right look to capture the grimy Boston underworld that
provides the film’s setting.

Audio:
The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital
Mono. Nothing much to say here – crisp, clean, not too dynamic and
not meant to be. Optional English subtitles support the English
audio.

Extras:
This is a nearly bare-bones Criterion
release. The only extra is an audio commentary by director Peter
Yates.

The insert booklet includes an essay by
critic Kent Jones and Grover Lewis’s 1973 “Rolling Stone”
profile of Robert Mitchum, compiled on the set of “Eddie Coyle.”

Final Thoughts:

Like the George V. Higgins book, “The
Friends of Eddie Coyle” is a lean, efficient crime drama, the kind
of film that feels like it could only have been made during the '70s.
Mitchum’s low-key performance as a total schlemiel is one of his
finest. Contrast this with his phenomenal performances in movies
like “Night of the Hunter” and “Cape Fear” and you’ll get
an idea how much range this great and unique actor had.

For reasons I don't quite grasp, the
gangsters in Yasujiro Ozu's “Walk Cheerfully” (1930) like to
perform choreographed dance moves, a group twirl finished with a
jaunty “Oh snap, how do you like that?” gesture. They don't care
that they're in a silent film; they're going to perform a nifty
number for everyone to enjoy. It's a hint that even though our main
character is an imposing thug nicknamed Ken the Knife (Minoru Takada)
this isn't going to be the most hard-boiled of crime flicks.

That's because Kenji (the Knife) barely
qualifies as soft-boiled. He pulls off penny-ante thefts with his
faithful henchman Senko (Hisao Yoshitani) but doesn't put up much of
a fight when the new woman (Hiroko Kawasaki) he falls for demands
that he go straight or else forget all about her.

If you are one of the many viewers
familiar exclusively with Ozu's sound films, it is obligatory to warn
you that you are about to be shocked, shocked I tell you, at what you
will find in this new three film set from Criterion's Eclipse series:
elaborate camera movements, shots from high angles and medium angles,
and even chase scenes. “Walk Cheerfully” begins with a hectic
example of the latter though it ends peacefully enough with Senko and
Kenji walking away from an accusing crowd feeling triumphant and
relaxed.

Ozu will dial up the tension, though,
as the happy hoodlums are forced to question their complacent ways by
the arrival of Kenji's new love, who is as much a problem for doting
Senko as for Kenji's jealous moll Chieko (Satoko Date), coiffed in
vintage Louise Brooks bob. Like all of the films in this set, “Walk
Cheerfully” reflects Ozu's love of American cinema; American movie
posters adorn the walls, English words feature prominently in the
background design and everyone is dressed in stylish Chicago mobster
suits and fedoras. Genre cinephilia was not an invention of the
Nouvelle Vague.

The real strength of “Walk
Cheerfully” is in the characterizations that prove to be more
layered than is typical of a gangster film of this (or any) era with
sidekick Senko being particular memorable in his eagerness to adapt
to whatever lifestyle choices his boss makes. The story, however,
proves to be a pretty formulaic redemption tale (with enough
intertitles to make this silent seem a bit too talky) which made the
film a mildly disappointing way (compared to my sky-high expectations
for any Ozu) to kick off the set.

That Night's Wife

That changes with the second film, the
efficient, moody and all around spectacular “That Night's Wife”
(1930). The film kicks off in the blackness of a city night with
police shooing away the homeless; they will burst into more frantic
action when they catch report of a brazen robbery that leads to a
manhunt that dominates the first half of this short 65-minute film.
The target is Shuji (Tokihiko Okada) who, after fleeing his crime
scene (punctuated by a dolly in to a bloody handprint on the door!),
clings desperately to the shadows, but comes fully into relief in a
spectacular scene staged in a phonebooth (oh, cinema has lost so much
with the shift to mobile).

His face drenched in sweat, Shuji
cowers in the booth while we see the feet of the officers shuffling
through the streets a short way away; these close-ups function almost
like sound-effects on the comic book page, adding sensory depth to
the silent proceedings. He is calling to check on the health of his
critically-ill baby girl who is being tended to by his faithful wife
Mayumi (Emiko Yagumo). A doctor establishes a classic deadline for
him: “You must return home tonight!” Shuji can practically hear
his bed-ridden daughter crying for daddy (we get to see it in
heartbreaking fashion) and heads home though he knows it will lead to
his doom.

The first half of the film is dictated
by the rhythms of the chase; the second half is all stasis, and
manages to be even tenser. A detective ( Togo Yamamoto) shows up at
the family apartment to take Shuji into custody, but the protective
mama bear winds up holding two guns on the copper while insisting
that her husband be allowed to stay with his sick child through the
night. In typical Ozu fashion we soon learn that the detective is a
man of great compassion rather than a cardboard cutout. The camera
explores every nook of this tiny apartment; one series of shots pans
right to left over several still-life compositions of bric-a-brac,
then reverses direction to show both the passage of time and a
surprising shift in power that has occurred in the interim. This
entire film is so very much alive and so very real (I think Ozu and
Satyajit Ray created the most authentic characters of all-time) and
the ending surely qualifies as “transcendental” by Paul
Schrader's definition.

Dragnet Girl

If Ozu doesn't top himself in the next
film in this set, he at least comes close. “Dragnet Girl” (1933)
is expansive where “That Night's Wife” was more carefully
circumscribed. A few years (and many films) later, Ozu's camera work
and editing are quite advanced, but the credit for this film's
success belongs in no small part to a finely-nuanced script by Tadao
Ikeda (from a story by James Maki). Though she is the title character
and the first important character we see, young Tokiko (Kinuyo
Tanaka) quickly recedes into the background as yet another jealous,
small-minded gangster's moll. She's destined to be cut out of the
picture when her tough-guy boyfriend Joji (Joji Oka), an ex-boxer
turned career crook, falls for the sweet, innocent sister of a new
young hoodlum in his gang.

But it's all a clever trick. This will
indeed be another story of redemption, but it will play out in a
wildly divergent fashion from “Walk Cheerfully.” Tokiko initially
seems content to be a stereotype as she confronts the new girl at
gunpoint, but an abrupt transformation occurs. Tokiko will be the one
to change and she, not little Miss Trueheart, will be the primary
agent of Joji's presumptive rehabilitation. In a sincere and deeply
moving scene, Tokiko makes herself completely vulnerable to Joji:
“Love me more!” It's pitiful in the literal sense of the term and
Joji both takes pity on her and on himself. What an amazing way of
shifting both the emphasis and the sympathy in the story; this needs
to be in a screenwriting textbook somewhere. Admittedly, you might
groan when the hackneyed line “We'll do one last job” casts its
doomed shadow over the proceedings, but darned if, after a brief
period of delusion, the couple doesn't realize just what a rotten
idea they've come up with. I guess they had seen as many movies as
Ozu.

Auteurists can't help but study these
films for the signs of the Ozu that was to come, but perhaps it's
better to focus on the Ozu who was, not yet 30 and intoxicated with
both American films and the craft of filmmaking. He was certainly
refining the techniques that would make him one of cinema's greatest
masters, but he was clearly also just having himself one hell of a
good time. And just a few years into his career, he wasn't a half-bad
little director either.

Video:

All three films are presented in a
1.33:1 aspect ratio. Eclipse is Criterion's no-frills sub-label so
these SD transfers have had little, if any, restoration. “Walk
Cheerfully” shows considerable deterioration in many scenes, with
staining and other debris visible throughout. “That Night's Wife”
is slightly-less damaged but still shows advanced degrading in image
quality which is most problematic in night-time scenes that look even
darker than they were meant to; surely we were meant to see more in
scenes where we can just barely pick out the shadow of a tree. Still,
the images are intact and show enough detail to provide some striking
close-ups and to make out the sometimes elaborate background décor.
“Dragnet Girl” is by far the best of the lot. It has its share of
dirt and debris but little of the overall deterioration of the other
two transfers. In general, these films look their age but they're
strong enough to be fully appreciated.

Audio:

These three silent films are all
accompanied by new piano scores by Neil Brand which sound quite
robust and clean. I'm no music expert, but I enjoyed all three scores
quite a bit.

Extras:

Eclipse rarely includes extras but we
do get the usual (and always excellent) one-page liner notes by
Michael Koresky who has been a marvelous guide through these Eclipse
releases for some time now, so three cheers to you, sir!

Each disc is stored in its own slim
keepcase with all three cases fitting into the cardboard sleeve with
graphics for the Eclipse Series.

Set Value:

Next time your movie-loving friend
tells you Ozu always filmed at “tatami level” and hardly ever
moved the camera, you can just say “Oh, really?” and point him or
her to these three films (or, really, most other Ozu silent films).
“Walk Cheerfully” is good but not Ozu at his finest while “That
Night's Wife” and “Dragnet Girl” are pretty marvelous. Just sit
there and smile while thinking about a young, eager Ozu digging and
living out the dream as an up-and-coming talent in an industry he
would soon come to define. And a young pre-stardom Chishu Ryu appears
as an extra “Policeman” in the last two films, though this
partially face-blind reviewer must admit he didn't quite catch him
the first time through.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

“Oh Jeanne, to reach us at last, what
a strange path you had to take.”

Written/Compiled by Christopher S. Long

The construction of an elaborate set,
perhaps then the most elaborate in French film history, and six months of
grueling shooting in painstakingly-managed chronological order were
only the beginning of the struggle for Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928
silent masterpiece “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” Below is a
timeline of the film's release and the many twists and turns in its
perilous journey through nearly ninety years. Precisely none of this
is compiled from original research by me and I have listed my primary
sources below; they deserve all of the credit, especially the
detailed studies by T.A. Kinsey and Tony Pipolo.

I therefore do not post this as
scholarly or definitive work, but simply as a brief summary of the
research I have done in preparing my current class on the films of
Carl Theodor Dreyer, which I am currently teaching at the Bryn Mawr
Film Institute. I welcome all of my students who are checking in as
well as any other readers who have kindly taken the time to read my
humble little blog.

JOAN THROUGH THE AGES:

April 21, 1928: The film premiers in
Copenhagen. This initial release is believed to have been screened
silently (as this was Dreyer's stated wish) and had no credits at all
as Dreyer wanted viewers to feel as if they were peeping “through a
keyhole” at reality.

April 26, 1928: A free matinee
screening is opened to 1,800 unemployed workers who filled out
response cards, reportedly providing wildly enthusiastic feedback.

June 26, 1928: A press screening in
Paris which would normally be quickly followed by a public opening,
but French censors held up the film's permit, largely due to concerns
from Church officials in France as well as long-standing protests
from nationalist forces who objected to the film the moment a foreign
director was announced for a project about “our Joan.”

Oct 25, 1928: The film begins a
month-long run in Paris to substantially less enthusiasm than it
experienced at the initial Copenhagen release. It would play with a
score and with unauthorized cuts. A different version would be
released nine months later that was allegedly better received, but
the film would be a commercial flop in any version.

Dec 6, 1928: The negative had been
shipped to the UFA studio in Berlin for the film's German release,
but is destroyed in a fire. Dreyer immediately begins assembling a
second negative from alternate takes (fortunately he had many, many
takes, shooting at approximately a 40:1 ratio). Supposedly this
second version is a shot-for-shot match and only Dreyer and the
film's editor Marguerite Beauge could notice the difference. In 1929,
this second negative would be reported destroyed by fire in a French
studio. Dreyer's spirit was broken and he did not work on another
version of the film. Prints made from both negatives survived and
would assure that the film would continue to be seen, but these would
gradually deteriorate with each projection.

Mar-May 1929: The film plays in the
United States in a slightly shorter version. Like most versions, this
one was usually played with musical accompaniment and likely had
credits attached.

1929: The film's UK opening is delayed
for about a year as British censors object to the portrayal of the
British military in the film.

1933: One of the strangest of the many
different versions of “Joan” is released, one put together by
B-movie producer Sherman S. Krellberg (responsible for such films as
“Fighting Cowboy” and “City of Lost Men”). It would run
barely an hour, had no intertitles, and featured narration by radio
personality David Ross. It was advertised with the horrifying
tagline: “Sherman S. Krellberg Presents A New Thrill In Talking
Films.” According to author Tony Pipolo (1988), an advertisement
featured Krellberg's name more prominently than Dreyer's. Rights to
the film were already under dubious protection (if any) in certain
countries just a few years after its initial release.

1950-52: A negative of the film turns
up at Gaumont studios in France, possibly the one reported lost in
the second fire. This was handed over to the Cinematheque francaise
where film historian Joseph-Marie Lo Duca took charge of a
controversial re-release with a classical music score (the addition
of which required cropping a portion of the film along the left side
of the frame), some intertitles replaced by subtitles and some
remaining subtitles reprinted on backgrounds with stained-glass
windows and other Church imagery. It debuted at the 1952 Venice Film
Festival. Dreyer hated his version (“there are no words which can
express how Lo Duca has made my film on Joan of Arc banal”), but it
wound up being the one most often exhibited over the next 30 years in
many countries.

Joan with subtitles

1960s: The Danish Film Museum works on
a 'best guess” print put together from the many different and
largely unauthorized prints in circulation at the time. The term
“best guess” has fallen under great scrutiny by film scholars.
These numerous prints include copies stored at MOMA, the National
Film Archive in London, one from an Italian private collector and
several others.

???: At some point, “Joan” lapsed
into public domain in the United States (I could not find the exact
dates this was the case). This meant the copyright had not been
renewed/defended and anyone could release the film, possibly with
many unauthorized alterations. This changed in 1994 with the
Uruguayan Round Agreements Act, and the film rights were protected in
the U.S. once again. This actually happened to quite a few films,
even major titles such as Fritz Lang's “Metropolis,” Carold
Reed's “The Third Man,” and Alfred Hitchcock's “The 39 Steps.”

1981: One final bizarre twist in one of
the strangest release stories of all. A custodian at an Oslo mental
asylum discovers a pile of film canisters in a cupboard. They are
sent to the Norwegian Film Institute where they sit for three years
until they can be processed by the staff. It turns out to be a
negative of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” still wrapped and with
the Danish censor's seal intact; it has no credits and has Danish
intertitles supervised by Dreyer. It is likely this print was ordered
by the hospital's director Dr. Harold Arnesen though it was obviously
never played.

There was considerable debate over just
how different this “Oslo print” was from prints already in
circulation (roughly summing it up: there are a few more shots, some
of which are of different lengths, but no major additions or
omissions; however even small differences cannot be ignored; most
importantly, the quality of this negative was quite good.) The Oslo
print, extensively restored by the Cinematheque francaise (who
replaced the Danish intertitles with French ones and added credits),
has now become the most commonly played one. It was the basis for the
Criterion Collection's 1999 release of “Joan” on DVD.

A Few More Fun “Joan” Facts:

Michel Simon is listed in the opening
credits of the film as playing Jean Lemaitre; you will find a similar
listing currently on IMDB. This is incorrect. Simon only appears in
one very brief close-up and is glimpsed in the background of another
shot. Simon would become a very famous French actor and it is
possible that any “mistakes” in later credits added to the film
were not corrected in hopes of attracting his fans to the movie.

While the version of “Joan” on the
Criterion DVD played the film at 24 frames per second, the film has
frequently been screened (at venues like The Anthology Film Archive
in New York City) at 18 fps, adding a considerable amount to its run
time (from 82 min to 110) and also providing challenges for any music
played to accompany it (if music is used). Film historians and
archivists plan to battle to the death over this exciting topic.

This Oslo print has 1517 total shots
(including 174 intertitles), about double the amount of the typical
Hollywood film of the era. Of these shots, fewer than 30 show the
same character from shot to shot (i.e. a character walking from one
part of the room to another), an unusual feature that contributes to
the jarring, disorienting sense many viewers get from this film.
Thanks to Casper Tybjerg and David Bordwell for doing the counting on
that.

Jane Wiedlin as the definitive Joan of Arc

There have been many film versions of
“Joan of Arc” over the years, of course. The most interesting
comparison to Dreyer's film is Robert Bresson's “The Trial of Joan
of Arc” (1962). Bresson's version is as sober as Dreyer's is
occasionally ecstatic; check out a clip (sorry, no subtitles) here.
If I could sum up two differences between the films: first, Dreyer's
Joan looks up while Bresson's Joan looks down (I think this
observation comes from another critic though I recently mistakenly
remembered it as my own) and second, Dreyer presents the trial as an
outrage while Bresson seems to view it as yet another example of
people just being people, i.e. horrible to each other. The perfect
Bresson quote, “What you see as pessimism, I see as clarity.”

References:

David Bordwell, The Films of Carl
Theodor Dreyer (University of California Press, 1981).

Monday, April 13, 2015

Viktor Frandsen (Johannes Meyer) is the
kind of guy you hate on first sight. He wears a permanent sneer just
begging to be smacked off his face and holds his posture so rigidly
he's either expressing his total contempt for everyone else in the
room or he's severely constipated.

Familiarity doesn't render Viktor any
more likeable. In the first scene, he sleeps in late while his
harried wife Ida (Astrid Holm) works herself into an early state of
exhaustion preparing breakfast and tending to the children. Within a
few minutes after finally deigning to wake up, he bellows (this is a
silent film, but the intertitles read loud) to Ida for his slippers,
upbraids her for not having his morning coffee already on the table,
and demands that she brush off his jacket because that's just not the
sort of thing that constipated guys do for themselves. Once he
finally leaves for work we watch Ida bustle about all day long, just
barely keeping this pre-appliance household together with equal parts
ingenuity and perspiration. And what's her reward? Sneery
McScrewyouall stomps back in the door after work and dismisses all of
her efforts with a fine “Really! What do you do all day?”

Oh yes, you're going to hate Viktor
Frandsen. Boo, hiss, and boo again, sir! But just when you think
Viktor can't possibly have a single redeeming feature,
writer-director Carl Theodor Dreyer steers “Master of the House”
(1925) in a surprising direction.

The English titles (created by
Criterion for this release) that open this version of the film
proclaim housewives as the true heroes of modern life, but the movie
is really a testament to the strength and solidarity of all women
steadfastly resisting the patriarchy. Ida's suffering does not go
unnoticed, and pretty soon the family's elderly nanny Mads (more on
her in a moment) and Ida's mother conduct an intervention in which
they inform Ida that she must kick her no good husband to the curb
tout suite.

These wise women have learned a thing
or two about men and the film has provided us no reason to doubt
their judgment, but Ida offers an unexpectedly stirring defense of
her brute of a husband. Viktor lost his business and has since become
anxious and bitter; she was with him during the good years and it
would be selfish to leave during the bad. These are the words of the
classic true-hearted silent screen heroine whose unshakeable faith
wins the day, but they are also convincing.

Still, something must be done about
Viktor and at this point it's relevant to point that “Master of the
House” is billed as a comedy. This tale of a tyrannical, abusive
husband hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs to this point, but
things change once Mads (Mathilde Nielsen) takes charge of the
household. Convincing Ida to leave home for a while, the feisty nanny
(who also tended to Viktor as a child) begins a lengthy
rehabilitation project with the goal of breaking Viktor down and
building him back up again.

Viktor stands in the corner like a bad little boy

As marvelous as Astrid Holm's
restrained, naturalistic performance is, it's Nielsen who steals the
show. Her Mads doesn't take guff for a second., and she literally
slaps Viktor around to assure that he complies with the new program.
Men are the masters? Oh please, let's see how long Viktor lasts
trying to do a housewife's work: fold that sheet, change that diaper,
get your own damn slippers. Sleeping alone is no fun either. Dreyer
doesn't settle for the melodramatic (or even Bressonian) convenience
of an instant transformation. Repentance is only the first step for
Viktor; he's got to put in the daily labor required to achieve
genuine empathy.

Dreyer pays even more meticulous
attention to the domestic space than he does to Viktor's redemption.
Unlike most sets of the era, the apartment was not constructed as a
stage but rather a space fully enclosed with four (moveable for the
camera) walls. We get to know every inch of the apartment from the
stove to the table to the bedposts and, through that, the people who
inhabit it. I don't know of any cinematic living space that would be
explored so completely until fifty years later when we spied on
Jeanne Dielman at 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

The subject matter may seem more
mundane than the great Danish director's better known films like “The
Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) or “Day of Wrath” (1943), but
Dreyer takes his heroines and his “hero” (the intertitles even
place that word in quotes) every bit as seriously. The acting is both
varied (Meyer and Nielsen more grandiose, Holm so quiet and
confident) and superb, and the setting tangible. Dreyer had a heck
of a knack for emotionally potent endings, and he delivers in
profoundly satisfying fashion here as well.

Video:

The film is presented in its original
1.33:1 aspect ratio.

From the Criterion booklet: “For this
new restoration, undertaken by Palladium, a digital transfer was
created in 2K resolution on a Spirit 2 DataCine from a duplicate
negative and other source materials at Digital Film Lab in
Copenhagen. The film was also restored at Digital Film Lab, where
3,200 hours were spent removing dust, blotches, and scratches using
the DaVinci Revival and Phoenix restoraton systems. Fifty hours were
spent dedicated to image stabilization, where a Flame workstation was
used to remove jumps caused by splices. The film's original flicker,
the result of barying image exposure from the hand-cranked film
camera, has been preserved.”

I don't usually quote that much, but
that should give you a sense of how much labor went into the
restoration of this nearly ninety-year-old film. You will still see
some small scratches and other instances of damage, and a few scenes
are less sharp than others. But the overall transfer is quite
beautiful with rich B&W contrast and a thick grainy look that
pleases the eye. Image detail is strong enough that we can appreciate
not just the actors' faces, but the set decoration in the apartment
that hosts almost every scene. This is a 1080i(nterlaced) transfer
rather than Criterion's usual 1080p, but it doesn't pose any
problems.

Short version: This movie looks far
better than I ever imagined I would see it.

This is a dual-format release which
means a DVD and a Blu-ray have been included. I only looked briefly
at the DVD transfer and it is noticeably weaker as far as image
sharpness goes, but is otherwise solid and is, of course, sourced
from the same restoration.

Audio:

The LPCM 2.0 track does a fine job
presenting the score composed by Gillian B. Anderson in 2000 from the
cue sheets published by the Palads Teatret in Copenhagen that debuted
the movie on Oct 5, 1925. The Anderson score was performed on piano
by Sara Davis Buechner in 2004, and has been remastered for this
release. The lossless audio crisply captures this modest but
effective score.

Title cards in this silent film are all
in English. To the Criterion booklet once more: “When 'Master of
the House' was originally released, Palladium distributed two
versions: one with Danish intertitles and the other with English
ones. For this edition, Criterion returned to the original Danish
version to create a new set of English intertitles.”

Extras:

Criterion has only included two extras,
but both are interesting.

First is a new interview with Danish
film historian Casper Tybjerg (15 min.) He discusses the play (Svend
Rindom's “Tyrannes fald”) on which the film was based and some of
the elements Dreyer changed for the film, including some scenes that
were shot but cut out.

Second is a visual essay (23 min.)
written and narrated by scholar David Bordwell. Bordwell is just
about the best in the business at analyzing how a film or a scene is
composed, and he makes a very convincing case that this deceptively
simple movie is more aesthetically sophisticated than it appears on
first blush. He also adds some interesting information about the
production. Dreyer insisted that the apartment set have functioning
gas and water, no doubt a precursor to his construction of the
massive set for “Passion of Joan of Arc.”

The 20-page insert booklet includes an
essay by scholar Mark Le Fanu.

Film Value:

“The Master of the House” isn't
exactly a forgotten film, but it hasn't received as much press as
Dreyer's most ballyhooed masterpieces. As far as I know this is its
first North American DVD or Blu-ray release, and I expect this will
be a great opportunity for many viewers to evaluate this as yet
another great accomplishment by a great filmmaker.

John L Sullivan is a born fighter. The
Hollywood Strong Boy has already won the heavyweight box office belt
as the director of such lightweight comedies as “Ants in Your
Plants of 1939” and “Hey, Hey in The Hayloft” and now he's
battling risk-averse studio honchos for his dream project. “O
Brother Where Art Thou” will be a serious picture with symbolism
and real-world meaning, the kind of movie Depression-era audiences
really want. A (mostly) friendly executive suggests “Ants In Your
Plants of 1941” instead, but John L. Sullivan has picked his fight
and intends to go the distance.

Sullivan is portrayed by the steady,
inherently likeable Joel McCrea as an idealistic but naïve dreamer
(both a “bonehead” and a “genius” according to his peers) who
is stubborn and vain but is at least willing to accept a little
constructive criticism. Reminded that his privileged life has left
him short of the “real-world” knowledge he would need for his
magnum opus, he plans to acquire said knowledge by posing as a
drifter and hitting the road with just ten cents in his pocket.
That's about a penny for each of the members of his entourage who
trail him and help to provide one of the many parachutes he can
deploy whenever the going gets rough.

“Sullivan's Travels” (1941) was
writer-director Preston Sturges's most autobiographical feature.
Raised in privilege circumstances himself, Sturges was eager to
promote himself as more of an everyday Joe though his easy command of
sophisticated dialogue and his familiarity with the upper-crust
always made that a bit of a tough sell. Sullivan isn't precisely a
stand-in for Sturges, but he's not far removed from the real deal.

If Sullivan's sporadic explorations
teach him anything about poverty, it's that it is very cold.
Fortunately he can always press the rich man's panic button and get
warmed up whenever needed so any learning will be limited. If the
narrative has something else to teach Sullivan, it's that the
impoverished souls crowding America's trains and revival halls want
and need nothing more than a good laugh. No “deep-dish” movies
for an audience that hasn't even had lunch. A responsible “artiste”
will work to fill that need instead of selfishly following his own
ambitions.

If that was the entire premise of the
film, it would be pretty galling, populism at its most condescending
outside of a politician's campaign speech. It would also seem to be
an entirely inessential argument. Has there ever been a time when
Hollywood studios needed a slap on the hand to keep them from being
so ambitious and artsy and refusing to peddle formulaic escapist
fare?

But Sturges has a lot more on his mind
and certainly doesn't intend to suggest that the director become a
quiescent hack. “Sullivan's Travels” is indeed plenty artsy in
its own right and so serious at times it becomes downright grim. The
film shifts from screwball caper to a more serious register when
Sullivan hops his first train; the scene takes on an almost
documentary-like quality as the famous director playing at being a
bum muscles his way through a crowd, make that a huddled mass, of
itinerants gearing up for a desperate rush for a berth aboard a
moving train. The worn faces, the tattered clothes, the frantic surge
all speak to a deprivation so vast the silver screen can only catch
an oblique glimpse of it.

Accompanying Sullivan on this train
ride is a young woman dressed as a boy, but since the young woman is
played by Veronica Lake she isn't fooling anybody (although Sturges
and company fooled viewers by strategically hiding Lake's advancing
pregnancy). The unnamed girl showed Sullivan a little kindness when
he was hard up for a meal, the first of several times he encounters
spontaneous acts of generosity on a journey that brings him in
contact with considerable suffering and occasional peril, and now
she's tagging along with him ostensibly to keep him out of trouble.
Lake's peak was all-too-brief but here she is at her glorious peak
and she is, to dust off a film theory term, a real pill. And yes, of
course they'll wind up together; ain't you never seen a Hollywood
picture before?

While the film's superficial paean to
populism falls flat (at least for me), its tribute to the suffering
and the resiliency of disenfranchised workers in a land short on jobs
and overstuffed with exploiters rings true. Perhaps the most
memorable shot in the movie is a pan across the faces of worshipers
at a black church as a group of mostly-white prisoners (Sullivan
among them – it's a long story I won't spoil for you) files in to
the back so everyone can watch a Disney cartoon. The group's laugh is
the sound of solidarity which, at the very least, has the advantage
of being eminently affordable, and a little more plentiful when
facilitated by the right movie.

The ending is a bit too pat and
unconvincing (according to critic David Cairns on an extra on this
disc, Sturges was unsatisfied with it) but “Sullivan's Travels”
is a film so quintessentially of its time that it remains timeless.
When the bell finally rings, Sturges has won by a knockout.

Video:

Criterion originally released
“Sullivan's Travels” on SD in 2001 and I don't have it as a point
of comparison. This Blu-ray re-release maintains the old Spine Number
118 but comes with spiffy new cover art.

The film is presented in its original
1.37:1 aspect ratio. There are occasional signs of some minor dirt
and debris from the print source but we're talking specks rather than
chunks, nothing significant but not entirely pristine. I think that's
perfectly acceptable for a 70+ year-old film. Black-and-white
contrast is rich with a thick grain structure throughout and only the
occasional bit of softness suggesting some clean-up boosting. This
high-def transfer looks very good overall.

Audio:

The linear PCM mono track is crisp and
efficient as we've come to expect from Criterion's single-channel
presentations. No damage or distortion is audible. The score by Leo
Shuken and Charles Bradshaw is treated pretty well by this lossless
audio. Optional English subtitles support the English audio.

Extras:

Criterion has imported the extras from
the 2001 SD release and added one more.

The new one is a great visual essay
(2014, 17 min.) written and directed by critic David Cairns and
titled “Ants In Your Plants of 1941,” a playful suggestion that
it's a kissing cousin to the next film the rehabilitated Sullivan is
going to make. This essay features narration by director Bill Forsyth
(of “Local Hero” fame) who is a big fan of the film. Forsyth and
Cairns (in voice-over) trade off observations about the film; one new
tidbit I picked up was that Sturges loosely based Sullivan's travels
on real excursions by directors John Huston and William Wyler. Cairns
admires the film while also noting that, like every other movie, it's
not perfect.

The other features are repeats from the
2001 release, including the commentary by filmmakers Noah Baumbach,
Kenneth Bowser and Christopher Guest and Michael McKean. They like
the movie a little bit.

“Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall
of An American Dreamer” (75 min.) is an Emmy-award winning
documentary directed by Kenneth Bowser and written by Todd McCarthy
which aired in 1990 on PBS's “American Masters” series. It takes
a pretty conventional approach to the writer-director's career but
provides quite a bit of information in an entertaining, accessible
manner.

The disc also includes a 2001 interview
(13 min.) with Sandy Sturges, wife of the writer-director.

And we also get three Archival Audio
clips: Sturges talking to Hedda Hopper (4 min., from a Jan 28, 1951
broadcast of “Hedda Hopper on Hollywood”), Sturges reciting the
poem “If I Were A King” (1 min.) and Sturges singing “My Love”
(1938, 1 min, 37 sec.), one of many songs he composed.

The slim fold-out booklet features an
essay by critic Stuart Klawans.

Final Thoughts:

I used to hold the extreme populist
premise of “Sullivan's Travels” against it, but I have since come
to embrace its many obvious strengths instead. This high-def upgrade
from Criterion only adds one new extra but it's a good one and the
sharp new transfer is a strong one. Recommended, of course.

Friday, April 10, 2015

In an interview included on this
Criterion release, film scholar John Hill states that Carol Reed's
1947 film “Odd Man Out” is substantially more sympathetic to
its characters than the F.L. Green book of the same title from which
it was adapted. I can scarcely imagine how withering the novel must
be because Reed's film is not exactly a humanitarian showcase.

It's difficult to evaluate which set of
characters comes off seeming more self-absorbed: the members of “The
Organization” (clearly meant to be the IRA) or the citizens of
Belfast (a city which goes unnamed in the movie) who don't want to
get involved in any kind of troubles. Or Troubles.

Johnny McQueen (James Mason), a local
Organization leader, has been hiding out in a cramped row house since
his escape from prison several months ago. In the opening scene, he
puts the finishing touches on a plan to stage a daring robbery; he
feels a little bad about it, but it's necessary to fund the operation
so he'll live with the guilt. His confidant Dennis (Robert Beatty)
and his would-be paramour Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan) warn Johnny that
extended confinement has made him too weak to work in the field, but
Johnny ignores them. This is what the screenwriting gurus like to
call a “plant.”

We don't have to wait long for the
payoff. The heist goes off smoothly enough, but the exertion makes
Johnny dizzy, causing a delay in the getaway that leads to an
exchange of gunfire that leaves our hero wounded and a guard dead.
Johnny winds up stranded on the streets of that unnamed city that
strongly resembles Belfast (mostly recreated on London sets though
with enough location shooting to add a dose of verisimilitude), his
life bleeding away drop-by-drop as he seeks assistance from the
locals he and his Organization are, in theory or at least in their
blinkered world view, fighting for.

He will have to look long and hard for
that help. As Johnny barely clings to consciousness, one citizen
after another passes on the opportunity to intercede on his behalf: a
couple seeking to steal a kiss skulks away when they stumble on
Johnny's hideout, a cab driver dumps Johnny's limp body in the
mud-soaked street and a bartender bribes a man just to take Johnny
out of his establishment. One of the few men who takes a keen
interest in Johnny's plight is Shell (F.J. McCormick) who rushes off
to Father Tom (W.G. Fay) in order to sell information about Johnny's
whereabouts; he's crushed to learn that the priest has nothing more
tangible to swap than mere salvation.

It's a grim array of
salt-of-the-Earthers looking either to pass the buck or to make a
buck off Johnny, though their lack of charity is strongly correlated
to (and perhaps justified by) their contempt for the Organization.
That excuse doesn't hold for faithful Kathleen, who loves Johnny so
completely she shuts out all other worldly concerns. When she first
reads the headline about the guard killed in the botched robbery, her
only thought is “Poor Johnny.” Screw the guard. She shows little
more empathy after she takes to the streets to track down her man; in
a conversation with Father Tom, she declares quite plainly that she
would rather kill Johnny than turn him over to the police, and she
just might mean what she says. I suspect she's intended to be a
true-heart heroine, but her monomania renders her the most
problematic character in a film packed to the gills with them.

Fortunately Johnny encounters a few
(though just a few) kinder souls in his faltering journey. In the
movie's most textured sequence, Johnny is taken in by two women who
believe he has been run over by a car. As they nurse him back to
health, they discover both his gunshot wound and his gun. Realizing
this is the Johnny McQueen every one is looking for, they are torn.
Rosie (Fay Compton) wants to get him the care he needs but also
doesn't want to be an accessory to his crime; her feelings about the
Organization go largely unstated but no doubt play a role in her
equivocation. She is genuinely relieved when Johnny takes advantage
of a heated argument in the next room (between Rosie and her husband
who wants to turn him in) to limp to the door and be on his way; the
burden has passed from her hands and she lets it go, but with a
strong twinge of remorse and a sincerely wished, “Good luck, lad.”

“Odd Man Out” was a pivotal film
for director Carol Reed. It was the first of three post-war works
(“The Fallen Idol” and “The Third Man Out” following in 1948
and 1949, respectively) that helped make him an international force,
and he enjoyed considerable creative control from the producers. Reed
was free to indulge his fondness both for expressionism and poetic
realism, leading to fascinating if not always fully satisfying
results. The film begins in a naturalistic register and moves
step-by-step into more surrealistic territory as Johnny's grip on
this world slowly weakens. The nighttime streets are moodily lit in
rich black-and-white, sometimes bustling and sometimes deserted, the
perfect shadowy labyrinth for our protagonist to lose himself in.
Highly stylized effects depicting Johnny's delusions (he sees faces
in his beer bubbles; ghostly figures gesture to him) are inventive
but also a bit ponderous; the hallucinatory flights of fancy that
Powell and Pressburger staged with such flair during the same era
don't work as well here, at least not to my taste.

Mason was in the earliest years of his
stardom, then best known as the romantic villain in the popular
Gainsborough melodramas, and fresh off a box office smash with “The
Seventh Veil” (1945). Here he takes on a decidedly non-glamorous
role as a pseudo-hero who spends most of the film slumped in a chair
or leaning against a wall, a passive figure who serves mostly as a
prop for the various people whose paths he crosses. He bleeds, he
gasps, he gawks helplessly as his fate is put in the hands of a
series of mostly uncaring souls, including a hard-drinker artist (an
enjoyably histrionic Robert Newton) who wants to paint Johnny's
portrait right at the moment of his death! Reed and his team
(including the great cinematographer Robert Krasker) pull off the
neat trick of letting us see the world through Johnny's eyes while
also holding him at a distance like a sideshow attraction on display.
Mason gets as much mileage as possible from a series of severely
restricted situations, keeping the audience fully in his orbit even
as he lapses into a near comatose state.

John Hill and others who speak on this
Criterion release claim that the casting of Mason naturally makes
Johnny a more sympathetic figure. Mason was irresistibly charismatic,
but was he ever an immediate point of empathy for viewers? Mason
sneered with the best of them, and was the master of seeming
irritated by everyone and everything around him, perhaps the most
chronically colicky superstar of his day. Johnny McQueen eats a big
dose of humble pie as he is forced to accept his inexorable
obsolescence, but he's also still a thug willing to steal and kill to
promote his agenda and then to hide and escape instead of face
justice. If he doesn't look quite so bad compared to some of the
other characters adrift in the gloomy Belfast night, that's not
exactly a ringing endorsement.

Video:

The film is presented in its original
1.37:1 aspect ratio. The black-and-white contrast is very strong with
thick blocky shadows that set the proper mood. Image detail is strong
but not razor-sharp throughout with a few scenes looking slightly
boosted from a likely digital cleanup. No complaints, however.

Audio:

The linear PCM Mono track is crisp and
evocative even with a relatively flat feel. The score by William
Alwyn benefit from the lossless treatment, never sounding reedy or
distant but not being too overwhelming either. Optional English
subtitles support the English dialogue.

Extras:

Criterion has assembled an impressive
array of extras for this Blu-ray release.

“Template for the Troubles” (24
min.) is an interview with film scholar John Hill. The interview is
conducted in the Crown Club, a Belfast location that served as an
inspirations for one of the major sets in the film. Hill provides
some historical context for both the novel and the film, noting that
IRA activities were relatively subdued at this time.

“Post-War Poetry” (16 min.) is a
2014 documentary shot for this Criterion release by White Dolphin
films. It combines interviews with several people, including the
great director John Boorman and the great critic Tony Rayns. This
piece discusses the production in more detail with emphasis on the
important role it played in Reed's career.

“Home, James” (1972, 54 min.) is an
eccentric inclusion, a documentary which follows a 63 year-old Mason
back to his childhood home in Huddersfield, with Mason's crisp
narration being a major selling point. It doesn't have anything in
particular to do with “Odd Man Out” but is a treat for Mason
fans.

“Collaborative Composition” (21
min.) provides an interview with film music scholar Jeff Smith,
author of “The Sounds of Commerce,” as he discusses the score by
William Alwyn.

The slim fold-out booklet includes an
essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith, author of “In Lonely Places:
Film Noir Beyond the City.”

Final Thoughts:

“Odd Man Out” has its share of
enthusiastic boosters with a few of the filmmakers and critics
interviewed on this disc calling it Carol Reed's best film. I'm not
quite so keen on it (it's nowhere close to “The Third Man” for
me) but it's a fine movie with a fascinating performance by Mason, a
star playing an increasingly irrelevant character. Criterion has
added a hefty helping of relevant extras, making this a fine
companion to “The Fallen Idol” and “The Third Man,” also in
the Criterion Collection.

Before their slightly more famous
collaboration “The Third Man” (1949), director Carol Reed and
writer Graham Greene teamed up to make “The Fallen Idol” (1948).
Based on Greene’s 1935 short story “The Basement Room,” the
film tells a classic tale of innocence lost. Phile (Bobby Henrey) is
the precocious 8-year-old son of a London-based ambassador. Since his
parents are usually too busy to spend time with him, he befriends the
butler Baines (Ralph Richardson) who, in turn, seems quite fond of
the boy.

Phile enjoys a privileged existence in
which everyone and everything conspires to provide him more
opportunities to play and to have fun; everyone, that is, except for
Mrs. Baines who serves as the boy’s strict governess. Mrs. Baines
is played with a stony face and withering stare by Sonia Dresdel who
does her best to out-witch Margaret Hamilton and out-shrew Mrs.
Fawlty. Phile chafes under Mrs. Baines’s iron hand and lets her
know it quite plainly: “I hate you.” Kids say the darndest
things. Mr. Baines, enduring a loveless marriage in the stoic British
manner, is doubtless thinking the very same thing about the missus.

Despite Mrs. Baines’s interference,
it’s all fun and games for Phile until he follows Baines to a
clandestine meeting with the lovely young Julie (Michèle Morgan).
Baines convinces Phile that Julie is his niece, but still suggests
that the boy not mention anything about her to Mrs. Baines: “It
will be our little secret.” Take note of the clever design in this
scene: despite the fact that Baines and Phile are walking
hand-in-hand, Reed (after an initial establishing shot from behind)
never shows a single shot of the two of them together, only reverse
shots of the towering Baines, and of tiny Phile looking up at his
(soon to be “fallen”) idol. This is not a secret shared between
friends, but one imposed by a powerful adult on a helpless child and
the first of many lies Phile will be asked to tell in fairly short
order; this “little secret” catapults Phile prematurely out of
his childhood Eden and into the world of scheming adults. It is a
world full of rules and codes of behavior and speech that Phile isn’t
yet capable of understanding.

The performance of young Bobby Henrey
is either the film’s greatest strength or its most glaring
weakness, depending on how you interpret it. Henrey is profoundly
non-professional even by child actor standards. He is awkward and
stilted, alternately sweet and annoying, has terrible timing and
constantly gets in the way. In other words, he’s a lot like a real
8-year-old boy, and Reed works some real magic with his naturalistic
but limited star. In one of the film’s most memorable moments,
Phile surprises his idol by imitating Mrs. Baines’s voice. Henrey’s
entire body convulses in a peristaltic spasm, like a python trying to
swallow a giant rat, as he squeezes out the high-pitched call of
“Baines!” It’s a curious piece of acting (OK, let’s just call
it “bad acting”), but Reed’s cut to Baines’s startled face
sutures the scene together quite effectively. Like it or not,
Henrey’s performance is, at the very least, a memorable one.

The first half of the film is by far
the most successful, showing the genuine affection between the boy
and the butler, but also foreshadowing the tragedy to come. In one
scene Phile overhears Baines on the phone with Julie: “Oh, it makes
no difference about the boy… Of course he doesn’t understand.”
Baines cannot reciprocate Phile’s unconditional love because the
life of an adult is just too complicated for that.

[Major spoiler alert ahead, if you
still care about such things for a nearly 70-year-old movie.]

The second half of the film shifts into
a less compelling detective story. Mrs. Baines falls to her death,
and Phile, still not understanding what he sees of the adult world,
fears that Baines did it. The police have the same suspicions, and
much of the action of the final act involves their investigation of
the crime scene. Phile tries in vain to be helpful, first by lying,
later by telling the truth, failing completely with both tactics.
Doesn’t anything make sense with these crazy adults?

“The Fallen Idol” is a beautifully
photographed film.Cinematographer Georges Périnal (who previously
worked for Michael Powell) indulges Reed’s penchant for tilted
angles (not as extreme as in “The Third Man” but still quite
striking) and camera flourishes with aplomb. The sprawling space of
the embassy which Phile calls home appears either vast or
claustrophobic in different scenes. Phile’s feverish run through
the shadowy, rain-soaked nighttime streets, shot at long distance and
from high angles, is a clear precursor to Harry Lime’s race through
the sewers, and should put to rest any claim that “The Third Man”
was really more of an Orson Welles film. Reed had a baroque style all
his own.

Attention James Bond fans. Keep an eye
out for a middle-aged Bernard Lee as a police detective. Stalwart
Bond director Guy Hamilton (“Goldfinger,” “Diamonds are
Forever,” “Live and Let Die”) also served as assistant director
on “The Fallen Idol” as well as “The Third Man.”

Video:

The film is presented in its original
1.33:1 aspect ratio. As with several of Criterion’s recent full
screen releases, the image is pictureboxed which means some viewers
will ses thin bars on the left and right-hand sides of the screen.
However, most DVD players compensate by zooming in to display the
full picture. The transfer is clean and bright, and the black and
white contrast very sharp.

Audio:

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital
Mono. Optional English subtitles support the English audio.

Extras:
“A Sense of Carol Reed” (24 min.)
is a 2006 documentary shot for the Criterion release. Directors John
Boorman and Guy Hamilton, among others, reminisce about Carol Reed’s
life and career, and make an argument for a reevaluation of Reed as
one of the great directors. Not that he's exactly unappreciated as
is.

The DVD also includes an Illustrated
Carol Reed filmography: posters and press book covers from all his
film. The Original Press Book for “The Fallen Idol” is also
available.

“The Fallen Idol” was the second of
Carol Reed's post-war troika (starting with “Odd Man Out” and
ending with “The Third Man”) that shifted his career into a new
gear. It netted him his first Oscar nomination and marked the
beginning of his most productive period. Reed was later showered with
glory by the Academy for his musical “Oliver!” (1968), a pleasant
and entertaining film that the Academy apparently preferred to Franco
Zeffirelli’s brilliant “Romeo and Juliet” and an obscure little
film that didn’t even get a Best Picture nomination, “2001: A
Space Odyssey.”

Saturday, April 4, 2015

When the as-yet-undiscovered genius
composer Schaunard (Kari Väänänen)
sees a stack of money on a cafe table, he confidently assesses it as
“At least sixty thousand francs.” Turns out it's fifteen, but to
him fifteen might as well be sixty. Money is strictly an abstraction,
or perhaps an urban legend, to a starving artist who remains pure in
the pursuit of his craft. Except for the times when “artist”
loses out to “starving.”

There's the rub, as the Danes say, and
wouldn't a Danish taste good about now? But there's reason for
optimism. Schaunard's got a pretty good deal going in cooperation
with his fellow creative types, the impoverished Albanian painter
Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpää)
and the criminally unappreciated writer Marcel Marx (André
Wilms). Granted, even a pooling of their resources still amounts to a
mere trickle, but at least they're in Paris, the only city that can
support their Bohemian lifestyle, i.e. permanent unemployment.
Crucially, it's a Paris shot in grubby black-and-white because a
color-saturated Paris just wouldn't have room for dreamers so
willfully out of touch with their time.

You can also pick up a lot of women
with the line “Hey, baby, wanna come back to my loft and see my
art?” Alas, love stories that start with there tend to end with
“I'm hungry.” But perhaps the awareness of an inevitable tragic
fate only makes the creative life that much more vital, and every
artist can use a good muse, or even a Musette (the name of Marcel's
secretary/girlfriend played by Christine Murillo).

Finnish writer-director-producer Aki
Kaurismäki read Henri
Murger's oft-adapted mid-19th-century collection “Scènes
de la vie de Bohème” as
a teenager and instantly vowed to film it one day; he only had to
wait a few decades to make good with this 1992 release. Undeterred
that more than a dozen directors had already beaten him to the punch,
Kaurismaki was eager to make his mark on the material, importing much
of his familiar team. Who better to play an Albanian painter in
France than the great walrus-mustached Finn Matti Pellonpää?
Need an Irish composer of unendurable atonal post-modern music? Kari
Väänänen, Kaurismäki's former village idiot and Polonius, is the
obvious choice.

Kaurismäki's
love for Murger's short stories dovetailed with his cinematic
Francophilia, and he probably figured it would help to have a few
actors in this French-language film who actually spoke the language,
unlike Pellonpää and Väänänen who learned their lines
phonetically. André Wilms was cast as Marcel and Evelyne Didi as
Rodolfo's girlfriend Mimi; Kaurismäki liked them both so much he
cast them both together a few decades later (as similar characters)
in the lovely “Le Havre” (2011).

The
film, like its characters, drifts around the same low-key Parisian
neighborhood (actually a Parisian suburb that looked more like old
Paris than modern Paris now does). The action picks up with the
writer Marcel being evicted from his apartment; we realize he's
unlikely to pay his back rent anytime soon when we find out his new
script is titled “The Avenger – A Play in 21 Acts.” While
homeless, he wanders into a cafe (much of the action takes place in a
series of sidewalk cafes – it's Paris, after all) and splits a
two-headed trout with the stranger Rodolfo. They become fast friends
and return to Marcel's apartment which is no longer Marcel's, but
fortunately the new occupant is Schaunard ,who has only Marcel's
unclaimed furniture to fill his four walls. The men reach a mutually
beneficial understanding.

The
narrative plucks several different threads, but gradually focuses in
on the budding relationship between the immigrant Rodolfo and Mimi,
who has traveled to the big city to stay with a friend who, it turns
out, will be staying in prison for a few years. The tragic lovers are
clearly destined for each other, yet also destined to be kept apart
by various factors: Rodolfo's lack of a visa, Mimi's health, and,
always, money. But they will always find their way back together.

The
film depicts its lazy dreamers with a combination affection and
skepticism, but never condescension. We know they are not
particularly talented (a brutal piano performance by Schaunard
prompts an end to one relationship as the scales, so to speak, drop
from one woman's eyes) but what matters is that they believe in
themselves and can at least muster the courtesy to pretend to believe
in each other. And, hey, every artist can, in theory, have his fans,
as we discover when Rodolfo gains an unlikely patron in the form of a
sugar baron and budding art collector played by Nouvelle Vague legend
Jean-Pierre Léaud. Cameos by directors Sam Fuller and Louis Malle
provide extra servings of cinephilic pleasure. I would also be remiss
if I neglected to mention the moving performance of Laika as
Rodolfo's faithful dog Baudelaire.

It's
amazing to find out that Pellonpää and Väänänen spoke their
lines phonetically. They are thoroughly convincing and certainly have
no trouble sharing scenes with the Francophones; the whole cast
develops an easy-going, naturalistic chemistry. It helps to have a
face like Pellonpää's, such a natural deadpan template. Each of the
characters has considerable flaws, but they all exhibit an endearing,
if vain, nobility in their penniless suffering. They look foolish at
times, but we all do to certain observers. The delicate stasis they
craft together has an irresistible appeal; it's the kind of pocket
universe you'd love to slip into for a summer or two, as long as you
could stage a strategic exit before the food runs out.

Video:

The
film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Timo
Salminen's black-and-white photography looks particularly lustrous
with this 1080p transfer, with sharp contrast and a satisfying
fine-grain structure. On just a few occasions, I noticed slight signs
of artifacting, a bit of distortion around foreground objects, but
it's minor and nothing that detracts from the viewing experience.

Audio:

The
linear PCM mono audio track is crisp and distortion free as far as I
can tell. The film is mostly dialogue-driven but a few prominent
musical cues sound very strong here, the best being a performance of
“Bird Dance Beat” by a bar band identified in the credits as The
Fake Trashmen. Optional English subtitles support the French audio.

Extras:

“Where
is Musette?” is a 52-minute behind-the-scenes documentary directed
by Veikko Nieminen. The on-set documentary features several
interviews with Kaurismäki, but also emphasizes the collaborative
nature of this intense, independent production. And at the half-hour
mark, you'll get a brief performance by Sam Fuller.

The
only other extra is a 2012 interview with actor André Wilms (11
min.)

The
slim insert booklet features an essay by critic Luc Sante.

Film
Value:

This
might be my favorite Kaurismäki movie. The deadpan humor is
pitch-perfect here, and the cast works in perfect harmony. This
doesn't get as much attention as many other Kaurismäki movies, but
don't miss out on it.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Portuguese director/national treasure
Manoel de Oliveira died today at the age of 106. By most accounts he
was the oldest active filmmaker, and by any account the shape and
span of his career was virtually unparallelled. His first film,
“Douro, Faina Fluvial”(“Labor on The Douro River") was a silent
movie released in 1931; a bit later, “The Strange Case of Angelica”
(2010) employed digital animation to relate its exquisite tale of
haunted love. Perhaps the only parallel to Oliveira's film career is
that of film itself.

Oliveira was largely silenced in the
middle of the 20th century by oppressive censorship from
the right-wing regime in Portugal. After 1942's “Aniki-Bóbó”
he shot only one feature and several documentary shorts over the next
quarter century. He was merely resting up for the greatest stretch
run cinema has ever witnessed.

From
the '70s on, Oliveira seemed to become more prolific with each
passing decade. Oliveira released more than twenty films, a
mix of features and shorts, in the 21st
century, a century he greeted a few weeks after his 92nd
birthday.

Oliveira's
output as a nonagenarian and centenarian certainly contributed to his
beloved status among cinephiles around the world, but he was no aged
trick pony. His films, often about doomed love (indeed he made a
mini-series called “Doomed Love”), were sensitive, literary,
meticulously staged works of deceptive simplicity that speak to an
eye that saw clearly well past the century mark. They would be great
and celebrated films from a mere lad of eighty, or thirty for that
matter.

Below
I have re-posted my 2008 review of Oliveira's “Belle Toujours”
which I'm not even sure ranks as one of his top five movies made
since turning 90, but which is still a modest gem. For other great
Oliveira films on DVD and Blu-ray, I recommend the Cinema Guild
releases of “Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl” (2010) and
the aforementioned “The Strange Case of Angelica” which also
includes that first short “Douro, Faina Fluvia.” And if you can
find a copy of the Image Entertainment's release of “I'm Going
Home” (2001), one of Oliveira's finest, pounce on it.

BELLE TOUJOURS (the great Manoel de Oliveira, 2006)

New Yorker Films, DVD, Release Date June 24, 2008

Review by Christopher S. Long

It’s rare that I get to write about a
hundred year old director but, to be fair, Manoel de Oliveira was
merely a lad of 97 when he made “Belle Toujours” (2006). Also to
be fair, de Oliveira has to wait another 5 months before he
officially makes it to 100, but considering that he has released two
features and two shorts in the last two years and has one of each in
production in the current year, he doesn’t appear to be slowing
down any time soon. He made his first short film in 1931, and his
first feature in 1942 after which his career was derailed for nearly
15 years, and he would not release his next feature film until 1963
when, at the age of 55, he finally got things cranking.

As if flipping off Father Time,
Oliveira has been more productive in the past decade than at any
other time in his career, releasing 18 films (features and shorts)
since 1998, nearly half his lifetime output. Please note that it is
old hat (pun intended) to discuss Manoel de Oliveira’s age these
days, but since this is the first opportunity I have had to write
about this remarkable director, I’m entitled. I promise not to say
a word about it over his next hundred years.

With “Belle Toujours,” Oliveira has
made perhaps his oddest film, intended as a sequel of sorts to Luis
Buñuel’s landmark “Belle de Jour” (1967). Except that “sequel”
isn’t the right term; rather it’s an afterword written long, long
after the main text. “Belle de Jour” is one of Buñuel’s most
perverse and perverted films (and I mean that in a good way), the
story of a bored housewife named Severine (Catherine Deneuve) who
loves her devoted husband but still chooses to spend her days working
in a high-end brothel. She harnesses her inner masochist with the
help of her husband’s best friend Henri (Michel Piccoli) and an
array of twisted clients.

“Belle Toujours” kicks off at a
concert in which the much older but not necessarily any wiser Henri
(played again by Michel Piccoli) spots the much older and possibly
wiser Severine (played this time by Bulle Ogier) in the audience. He
stare at her as if trying to mesmerize his former object of desire,
but she proves elusive and disappears in a limo before he can speak
to her. Henri is nothing if not dogged, however, and he soon tracks
her down at her hotel. She has no interest whatsoever in catching up
with her “old friend,” but he persuades her to have dinner with
him. While killing time, he also stops in a bar to recount his story
(the story of “Belle de Jour”) to an easily impressed bartender
(Ricardo Trêpa, the director's grandson and star of some of
Oliveira's later films) which isn’t really intended as exposition
for the viewers, but further confirmation of Henri’s vanity.

You might be thinking this is a reunion
story of sorts. That is, if you know nothing about Buñuel or
Oliveira which, apparently, is true of whoever wrote the summary at
Rotten Tomatoes which ludicrously describes the film as “a short
and sweet elegy on aging, sexuality, and the power of cinema.”

“Belle Toujours” picks up right
where “Belle de Jour” left off, digging perhaps into even more
perverse territory. Henri’s patrician façade has no doubt fooled
many a socialite into thinking him quite the gentleman, but his
intentions to Severine are anything but honorable. Severine, we
discover, has “redeemed” herself in the ensuing four decades,
devoting herself to her husband and to God. Henri cannot let this
affront to nature stand, and plays sadistic mind-games with her, and
the real mystery for us to confront is whether Severine, despite her
protestations, is every bit as much into humiliation as she ever was.
Indeed, what else could she possibly expect when she (not so?)
grudgingly accepts his invitation to dinner? Oliveira’s subversion
of the need for the closure one might expect from a reunion narrative
is his slyest, and cruelest, touch. Buñuel would be proud.

Indeed, the film is permeated by the
spirit of Buñuel, not just in its direct references to “Belle de
Jour” (a picture here, a gift there) but in its relationship to his
entire work. Viewers unfamiliar with Buñuel might be puzzled when
the film appear to continue one scene “too long” after the main
characters have exited and the servants are talking to each other,
but it’s the sort of moment that cropped up again in again in
Buñuel’s work, most notably in his masterpiece “Exterminating
Angel” (1962).

Piccoli, as usual, is brilliant. Though
a mere whippersnapper next to de Oliveira, Piccoli has been a screen
star for sixty years now, and has done some of his best work in
recent years, especially with Oliveira (Piccoli was also phenomenal
in 2001's “I’m Going Home”), and he relishes his opportunity to
re-visit one of his best-known roles. Here, Henri Husson makes the
leap from supporting character to protagonist with Severine as more
of a fringe character who flits about the edges of the screen until
the climactic dinner sequence. Bulle Ogier cannot match the screen
presence of Catherine Deneuve, but she isn’t called on to do much
here except to simply be Severine.

Will you be unable to enjoy “Belle
Toujours” if you aren’t a Buñuel aficionado? No, though it’s
fair to say you won’t necessarily be fully in tune with de
Oliveira’s project. Even on its own, the film is an ambling,
amusing psychosexual cat and mouse game which proves that the march
of time doesn’t mean you have to be any less of a sick bastard.
That’s a theme we can all identify with.

Video:
The film is presented in a 1.78:1
anamorphic transfer. Though the transfer is interlaced, it’s
unusually strong by New Yorker’s standards. The color saturation
is just right (sometimes a problem with this studio) and the image
quality is fairly sharp. Still, it would be nice if they could offer
progressive transfers in the near future.

Audio:
The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital
2.0. Optional English subtitles support the French audio.

Extras:
With such a short film, it would have
been nice to get a few more extras. What we get isn’t bad though.
There are four interviews, the best of which, of course, are the ones
with de Oliveira (23 min.) and Piccoli (9 min.) Interviews with
Bulle Ogier (5 min.) and

Ricardo Trêpa (2 min.) provide a few
brief perspectives on working with the veteran director.

Also included are a Trailer, a Photo
Gallery and a Press Kit which can be accessed as a PDF file on your
PC.

Film Value:

At 65 minutes (not counting the end
credits), this strange coda to “Belle de Jour” is over almost as
soon as it starts or, more accurately, speeds away after its
lightning-strike hit and run job. I suppose you could consider this
film to be a meditation on aging (as many critics have written), but
it’s a pretty pervy one and surely not a “sweet elegy” of
any kind. In all honesty, I like this film more than “Belle de
Jour” which, I admit, is not one of my favorite Buñuels. Long
live Michel Piccoli! Long live Manoel de Oliveira! Well, I guess
they’ve already done that. But you know what I mean.